Of Living and Surviving
by Helen Markham
Summary: Post-Hogwarts life- follows canon. Just a prologue: the final battle.


Harry was frantic.  
  
Any and all curses, jinxes and spells he had learned in his seven years of magical instruction were pouring out of his mouth in random order, in a vain effort to impede the progress of the encroaching death eaters. The scene was spinning out of control; more and more Death Eaters bent on his destruction, fewer and fewer options for his spent being to take.  
  
The scene shifted: it was much later in the battle. Bodies littered the floor of a room barely recognisable as Hogwart's Great Hall. He and Dumbledore were fighting back to back, but the fight had become secondary to the words now burned into Harry's psyche.  
  
"Harry, I must leave you shortly. You will understand the necessity once I am gone. However, it is not yet time for you to go. All that you have be taught will be of little use now; trust me when I say that it is in your soul to do what is required of you. It is within you, Harry. I have the utmost faith in your ability. You will have only seconds to act."  
  
With that, the Hall was filled with a silvery blue light, air reverberating with a clap so colossal it was felt, rather than merely heard.  
  
In the eternity which followed that instant, a detached part of Harry's mind examined with clinical precision the expression of his allies in their deaths: Severus Snape, Alastor Moody and Minerva McGonagall.  
  
Tonks and Hagrid.  
  
Mundungus Fletcher, Kingsley Shacklebolt and Emmeline Vance.  
  
Ernie MacMillan, Michael Corner, Katie Bell and Susan Bones. Natalie Macdonald, Sally-Ann Perks, Mandie Brocklehurst, Euan Abercrombie. Terry Boot, Cho Chang, Seamus Finnigan, Parvati Patil and Millicent Bulstrode.  
  
Luna Lovegood and Neville Longbottom.  
  
Remus Lupin.  
  
There were more, but Harry lost his sense of detachment as his eyes encountered the lifeless forms of Bill, Charlie and Percy Weasley, sprawled unceremoniously by the body of their father. NO, thought Harry as his heart filled with emotion, they can't be gone! What about Fleur and their twins? It's the only good thing that's happened this year! Harry continued to search the Hall; to his mind what took nanoseconds stretched into centuries. His eyes finally settled on the scene taken straight from his personal hell: the bodies of his two best friends blocking him from reaching Voldemort, wand raised above the crouching, bloodied form of Ginny Weasley. The stream of green light issuing forth from Voldemort's wand took an agonising amount of time to reach her vulnerable body, but somehow, miraculously, Harry had made it to her before it struck. Harry reached out with total illogic to block the spell with his bare hand. His mind contained only one thought- Let it be me, not her, let me join Sirius, Dumbledore...everyone I've ever cared about.  
  
His hand was becoming superheated, glowing red and gold in the light of the moon on the bewitched ceiling- Let me take her place, don't let her suffer more...LET HER LIVE!!  
  
**** Harry woke up soaked with sweat. Six years, he thought violently, six bloody years and I still can't let go. He got up, and moved around the tiny flat while he put his scattered mind back together. This one was worse than they had been recently: he knew that Charlie, Neville, Lupin, McGonagall, Tonks, Luna, and Katie- not to mention Ron and Hermione- had survived the terrible final confrontation with Voldemort and his Death Eaters, but the dream was enough to shake him. Harry recalled the events which unfolded (and he inevitably thought of) after the dream- the red-gold light which ricocheted from Harry's hand back full force into Voldemort's inhuman visage; Voldemort's equally inhuman scream as his body turned to the ash it should have been long since. Harry remembered seeing the perfect imprint of his hand on Ginny's skin above her right breast. The next four weeks were blank- Harry's next memory was of light streaming in through a beautiful widow in St. Mungo's. Ron and Hermione were talking quietly nearby. Their collision over his hospital bed and the ensuing scolding from the healer lightened his mood, even in memory.  
  
Author's Notes: So apart from being melodramatic and a bit incomplete.yeah, I'm not happy with this (and I can't seem to format it correctly). Reviews would be most appreciated, as I've not done this before. I have a plot, which does in fact go somewhere, but I'm thinking of making this a Harry dies and Draco survives thing- if only for the fact that I much prefer D/G to H/G. Any ideas? 


End file.
